Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/422

Diagram of magnetic analysis of radiation from radium, or other radioactive substance, embedded in a cavity in a block of lead with aperture upwards, above which they are exposed to a strong magnetic field. The β rays or flying electrons or Crookes rays, being negatively charged, are bent strongly to the right. The γ rays or ethereal pulses are not bent at all, and the α rays or exploded fragments of atoms, being positively charged but massive, are bent slightly to the left—much less bent in reality than the diagram shows. If the diameter of the β ray circle of bending is a quarter-inch, the diameter of the a ray circle of bending is eleven yards. This is how Rutherford rendered it almost certain that either helium or hydrogen, or both, was among the products of disintegration of a radium atom.

tem and another, which is proportional to the number of electrons in each. It is quite doubtful whether it is displayed by an isolated or disembodied electron, but the act of immersing an electron in its attracting atmosphere may develop it. We know too little about electricity, especially about positive electricity, to be able to justify or expand such a guess; but, as a guess and no more, I venture to throw it out: believing it to be a static residual strain effect, not due even to corpuscular motion, or to any other modifiable circumstance, but inherent in the constitution of each atom, whether it be an entire complex or be broken up into simpler substances.

If it be true that every atom occupies the same volume of space, then gravitation might seem to be an effect depending on the crowdedness of electrons; but when an atom breaks up into unequal parts, the smaller portion must in that case undergo considerable expansion, and that would be inconsistent with the constancy of gravitation, if it depended on crowdedness: hence I think it more probable that it depends on some interaction between positive and negative electricity and that it is generated when these two come together,—that is whenever an atom of matter is formed.

The formation of an atom of matter out of electricity is a new idea, and has as yet no experimental justification. The breaking up of complex atoms into simpler forms, and the partial resolution of an atom into dust or constituent electrons, is all that is as yet experimentally justifiable and all therefore that ought to be mentioned; but the inverse process seems to me naturally to follow, and I look to the time when some laboratory workers will exhibit matter newly formed from stuff which is not matter, instead

Hypothetical portrait of a hydrogen and of a radium atom, absurdly magnified. The dark region is supposed to represent positive electricity, whatever that may be; the dots are intended for electrons, and are necessarily drawn much too big, or they could not be seen even in a high-power microscope. They are careering about in orbits all of the same period, except in so far as they perturb each other; and some are represented as occasionally escaping, either temporarily or permanently, from the attractive sphere of influence of the positive electricity.